nielsen book us study: the importance of metadata for discoverability pdfs/supply chain...

1 NielseN Book Us stUdy: the importaNce of metadata for discoveraBility aNd sales

NielseN Book Us stUdy: the importaNce of metadata for discoveraBilit y aNd sales


ISBN: 978-1-910284-31-5

© Copyright The Nielsen Company US, LLC

Published in the US December 31 2016

Author:

David Walter, Senior Director, Client Solutions

David heads up Nielsen Book’s Research and Commerce Solutions

business in North America, including products such as BookScan,

PubTrack Digital, PubEasy and Pubnet. David also takes the lead on

Nielsen Book’s metadata products in North America.

ContributorS:

Our thanks for contributions and advice go to:

Patricia Payton, ProQuest and Bowker

Sam Dempsey, Baker & Taylor

Brian O’Leary, BISG

Mo Siewcharran, Director of Marketing Communications, Nielsen Book

About nielSen

Nielsen Book is a leading provider of measurement, consumer research,

search, discovery and commerce services globally. Nielsen Book is also

the world’s largest continuous monitoring service for print book POS

tracking through its Nielsen BookScan service, including its B&N, Target,

and Walmart BookScan dashboards. In addition, Nielsen Book’s portfolio

includes transactional services for publishers and retailers through

its Nielsen Pubnet and Nielsen PubEasy services; consumer research

through its Books & Consumers Tracker, which speaks to 72,000 unique

US book consumers annually; and information services through its

Nielsen BookData range of products. The Nielsen PubTrack Digital,

Nielsen PubTrack Christian and Nielsen PubTrack Higher-Education

services provides specialist insights for the e-book, Christian, and Higher

Education publishing sectors. For more information email

[email protected].

NielseN Book Us stUdy: the importaNce of metadata for discoveraBility aNd sales

3Copyright © 2016 The Nielsen Company

iNtrodUctioNNielsen Book first conducted analysis on the link between book sales

and bibliographic metadata in the UK market in 2012. The results of

that white paper, The Link Between Metadata and Sales, illustrated a

strong link between the completeness of the appropriate metadata

and the resultant sales. Providing complete and appropriate metadata

aids the tradability and discoverability of titles – and our previous

analysis added some quantitative measures to back up this notion. In

2016 we have revisited our earlier paper, and for the first time have

carried out a parallel study into the US market.

When we talk about ‘tradability’ we are referring to the ease with

which products can be identified and traded, and move through the

book supply chain. The book trade has some unique complexities.

Many of these arise from the fact that there are millions of individual,

separately tradable products available in the global market at any

one time, potentially being supplied by tens of thousands of different

publishers. In the US market 2.5 million different books were recorded

as having sales in the 12 month period covered by this study (July

2015 to June 2016). A single bookstore may carry tens of thousands of

titles, and is likely to hold only one, or a few copies of many of those

titles. This means that ordering and stock replenishment in the book

trade, with the exception of bestsellers and new releases, is generally

on a little and often basis.

Add to this the traditional sale-or-return model between publishers

and booksellers, and the flow of a huge range of products to, and

sometimes back from, retailers quickly grows to significant complexity.

These factors mean that creating a sustainable supply chain for the

book trade needs attention, planning and cooperation between all

parties.

The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) provides the

foundational key for many of the book trade’s supply chain

efficiencies, accurately identifying a unique item, for which a record

can be created listing key attributes. Industry bodies such as EDItEUR

(The trade standards body for the global book, e-book and serials

supply chains), BISG (Book Industry Study Group) and BIC (Book

Industry Communication) have developed further standards and

formats for the provision of data, such as ONIXi, the accompanying


code lists, and classification schemes. Providing accurate data on

properties such as publication date, price, supplier and physical

attributes aids booksellers in planning their stock management,

from scheduling future orders, to planning shelf space or storage

allocations, to ensuring shipments are made on the most

economical terms (through referencing physical attribute data).

Maintaining an efficient supply chain ensures that booksellers can

focus on selling books – and maximizing sales for publishers and

themselves. Where this valuable supply chain data isn’t available

to the bookseller, at best they will need to carry out additional work

(leading to decreased efficiency) and at worst they may not order

the product due to an inability to plan for it effectively.

Discoverability has been somewhat of a buzz word in the

book industry for several years now. In essence, the quality of

discoverability is the ease with which a particular product can be

found. This can either relate to trading partners within the book

trade, or end customers purchasing a title – to booksellers or

libraries searching for titles to stock, or consumers searching on

a website and relying on the metadata available. It can relate to

the discovery of a specific title, where the individual searching

knows what they are looking for and needs to find the appropriate

information or product record; or where an individual is using more

general criteria to browse, then identify a title that meets their

needs or taste.

Both of these qualities, the ease with which books can be discovered

and the ease with which they can be traded, rely heavily on the

provision of appropriate, accurate and timely metadata.


Delivering anD maintaining DataDelivering and maintaining the correct metadata takes constant

attention, focus and effort – this study aims to provide some

quantitative evidence on the value and effectiveness of these efforts.

Areas we will cover in this US study include:

• The provision of a set of basic metadata elements

• The provision of descriptive metadata elements

• The provision of keywords

Some caveats: the bibliographic data we have used in our analysis

comes from Bowker® Books In Print data – and though Books In

Print data is used widely within the US book trade, not all retailers

or libraries use this as their data source. Therefore we cannot draw a

direct line between the data we have used for this study and the data

used by all retailers. However, Books In Print data is likely to represent

a good measure of the best level of metadata available in the US book

trade.

Another limitation is that the metadata we have used is only a

snapshot, taken just after the period of the sales we refer to in the

study. Titles published at the start of the 12-month period (i.e. July

2015) may have had inadequate metadata at the start of their lifespan,

which has subsequently been improved before we have taken our

snapshot of the data. If anything, the consequence of this is that we

are understating the extent of the link between complete metadata

and sales.

Our apprOach anD DataNielsen Book measures retail sales for approximately 85% of the

US market through our BookScan panel, providing robust, reliable

and granular data on book sales in the US. Our sponsor, Bowker,

aggregates bibliographic data from 40,000 publishers to create an

extensive database of titles available in the US market, which is then

widely used by retailers both for internal systems and on consumer

facing websites.

We have combined these two data sets to undertake this study, which

focuses on the top 100,000ii best-selling titles over a 12 month period

(July 2015 to June 2016iii). While this is a relatively small proportion of

the total ISBNs recording sales during that time period (around 4%)

our data set represents approximately 86% of total book sales over the

period. Analyzing the metadata for those titles allows us to identify

the correlation between metadata and sales at a high level. Our key

measure is average sales per ISBN – we are not looking at absolute

numbers, rather grouping titles which have a similar level of metadata

completeness, and comparing these to other groups using the average

sales per ISBN as a measure.


It is also important to note that we are only carrying out a quantitative

analysis – looking at the number of metadata elements that are present

in comparison to an ideal ‘complete’ record. We are not measuring the

quality of the metadata – either the accuracy of attributes attached to the

product record, or the effectiveness of the more descriptive data elements

or keywords. Such an analysis would likely present further interesting and

valuable findings, but is outside the scope of this study.

prODuct Data Best practicesThe Book Industry Study Group (BISG)iv takes a leading role in

coordinating and promoting metadata best practices for the US book

market. BISG contributes to the development of ONIX by feeding into

EDItEUR’s ongoing activities, and manages the BISAC classification

scheme. In addition to this, BISG produces best practice guidance such as

their Product Metadata Best Practices.

In all of these activities, BISG brings together organizations from all

parts of the publishing industry – importantly, including downstream data

partners such as wholesalers and retailers who are using the data to help

get books through the supply chain and into the hands of customers.

More information on BISG’s metadata practices is available from the BISG

website.

Basic Data elementsOur first measure of the completeness of a title record’s metadata is the

presence of a set of basic data elements. These may be described as the

objective attributes of the book as a tradeable product, rather than the

more descriptive data elements, which we will examine in the next section.

The data elements we have grouped together to represent this basic level

of completeness include the following:

• ISBN

• Title

• Format/Binding

• Publication Date

• BISAC Subject Code

• Retail Price

• Sales Rights

• Cover image

• Contributor

Analyzing our data set by this measure gives the results below. We clearly

see the positive correlation between the completeness of this basic set of

metadata and sales, with titles meeting this level of completeness seeing

average sales 75% higher than those that don’t.


Fig 1.1 Average unit sales per ISBN for records holding complete basic data and a cover image

Fig. 1.2 Average unit sales across broad genres for titles with complete or incomplete basic data and a cover image

To drill down a level further, we looked again at this measure in terms

of the broad genres of fiction, non-fiction and children’s. The graph

below shows that we see the same positive correlation between

complete basic data and sales – with the strongest correlation

observed for fiction titles, where average sales are 170% higher for

titles meeting the criteria than those which don’t. Non-fiction and

children’s both sees average sales 55% higher for titles meeting the

criteria. We will see consistently through a number of measures that

fiction tends to see the highest correlation between the completeness

of metadata and sales.

0

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INCOMPLETE BASIC DATA AND IMAGE

COMPLETE BASIC DATA AND IMAGE

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FICTION NON-FICTION JUVENILE

Incomplete BasIc Data anD Image complete BasIc Data anD Image


Taking the presence or absence of a cover image in isolation, we see

that much of the positive correlation we saw for titles meeting the

basic metadata requirements can be attributed to the cover image.

The graph below illustrates this, with titles holding a cover image

correlating with sales 51% higher than those which don’t.

Fig. 1.4 Average unit sales across broad genres for titles with or without a cover image

Fig. 1.3 Average unit sales for titles with or without a cover image

Through these simple measures we already see a positive correlation

between the completeness of metadata and sales. This is consistent

with what we found in our 2012 UK metadata white paper, and saw

again in our recent UK study.

Splitting this out into broad genres shows that this is consistent – and

once more that the strongest correlation between the presence of this

element and sales is found for fiction titles.

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NO IMAGE IMAGE

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no Image Image


Descriptive DataIn addition to the basic data needed to identify a title and help it move

through the supply chain, descriptive data adds to the completeness

and richness of the data, and should translate into increased

discoverability both for book trade buyers and consumers.

Within our data set we have included the title description, author

biography and review, and have analyzed these data elements and the

correlation with resultant sales. The graph below shows titles grouped

into those that hold zero, one, two or all three of the descriptive

data elements in our data set. We clearly see that, as the number

of descriptive data elements for the titles increases, the resultant

average sales are higher. Those titles holding all three descriptive data

elements see average sales 72% higher than those with no descriptive

data attached.

Fig. 2.1 Average unit sales for titles with varying levels of descriptive data

Breaking this down into broad genres shows a similar pattern, but

with one anomalous result for children’s titles, where titles holding

one descriptive element see average sales higher than those with 2 or

3 descriptive elements. Looking at the children’s titles that hold just

one descriptive data element, we find the bestselling among them are

board books, coloring books and classics – where descriptive data is

less relevant, as the titles are already known to the consumer. This

echoes what we saw in our UK study, where annuals and branded

product skewed the figures observed for children’s books.

0

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NO DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS

1 DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENT

2 DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS

3 DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENTS


We also see the starkest difference in average sales for the fiction

genre. This can be seen as an indication that fiction is the genre

most reliant on customer browsing, and therefore more reliant on the

presence of descriptive metadata to assist browsing.

Fig. 2.2 Average unit sales for titles with varying levels of descriptive data, across broad genres

KeywOrDsKeywords can be added to a title record to supplement the other

descriptive data available. Where a title description, review or author

biography are intended to be readable, intelligible blocks of text,

keywords are simply a list or collection of terms that can be associated

with the title and used by search engines and other applications.

The aim of keywords is explicitly to increase a title’s likelihood of

discovery when searched for. Keywords can include elements such as:

• Character names, locations or associated organizations

• Broader descriptive terms where the title may straddle more than

one classification

• Additional information on themes covered in the book

• Related titles or authors

The above list is by no means comprehensive. In adding keywords to a

title record, the data supplier is attempting to second-guess what search

terms a consumer may use in a search engine or retailers website, and

include those terms to maximize their hit rate.

BISG have produced a very informative guide to keywords, which

provides further useful guidancev.

Analyzing our data according to the presence or absence of keywords

produces the results seen in the graph below. Titles which hold

keywords see average sales 34% higher than titles with no keywords.

0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000


no DescrIptIve elements

2 DescrIptIve elements

1 DescrIptIve element



Looking at keywords across broad genres, we once more find that

the strongest positive impact of increasing data completeness is for

fiction titles.

Fig. 3.1 Average unit sales for titles with and without keywords

Fig. 3.2 Average unit sales for titles with and without keywords across broad genres

Combining our data for titles with varying numbers of descriptive

elements and keywords allows us to look at the titles which hold

the optimal level of descriptive data – i.e. all three descriptive data

elements and keywords. This is shown in the graph below, and split

across broad genres. All three broad genres show that titles with the

optimal level of descriptive data see the highest average sales, with

once more fiction titles seeing the strongest correlation.

no KeyworDs KeyworDs

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NO KEYWORDS KEYWORDS

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10,000



Fig. 3.3 Average unit sales for titles with varying levels of descriptive data and keywords, across broad genres

aDDitiOnal finDings frOm the uK metaData stuDy Nielsen’s 2016 UK Metadata study covers much of the same ground as

this US study – with findings very much in line with what is presented

here (even down to the anomalous results we see for Children’s titles

and descriptive data). However, there are some additional measures

we have carried out in the UK study that were not possible for the US

due to differences between the data sets, and we will summarize these

briefly here.

no DescrIptIve elements


3 DescrIptIve elements plus KeyworDs

1 DescrIptIve element


0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000

10,000



Fig. 4.1 Average UK unit sales per ISBN for records which are not ONIX Compliant, those which are ONIX Compliant and

those which also meet the ONIX Compliance timeliness requirement

Data timeliness Nielsen Book’s UK bibliographic data records, not just what data

elements are received but when they are received. As part of the BIC

Basic and ONIX Compliance standards for data supply in the UK,

there is a timelines requirement which stipulates that the data should

be supplied 16 weeks, or 112 days, ahead of publication. We were

therefore able to analyze our UK data based on this timeliness criteria,

to judge how this correlates with sales.

The graph below illustrates how, in addition to supplying the

appropriate metadata for products, supplying the data sufficiently far

ahead of publication correlates with higher average sales. Providing

data early ensures that downstream book trade partners can effectively

plan their ordering and stock management of titles, and consumers

browsing for titles will be able to find what they are searching for, even

in advance of publication.

liBrary BOrrOwings anD metaData As well as measuring book sales in the UK, Nielsen Book also

measure public library borrowings by aggregating data from 70 public

library authorities via our Nielsen LibScan service. We can therefore

analyze library activity in a similar way to sales, and judge the value of

metadata for the library sector.

The graph below shows average borrowings for titles with varying

levels of descriptive data. Those titles carrying the full complement of

descriptive data elements see average borrowings over twice the level

of those that carry no descriptive data. This shows that descriptive

data plays a key role in the sourcing and discovery of books in the

library sector, just as it does for book sales.

all recorDs onIX tImelIness

0 500

1,000 1,500

2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500

NOT ONIX COMPLIANT ONIX COMPLIANT


Fig. 4.2 Average UK public library borrowings per ISBN for records holding zero to four descriptive data elements – short

description, long description, author biography and review

summary Through our various measures we have consistently seen that increasing

completeness of metadata correlates with higher sales on average. This

holds true for basic data and cover images, textual descriptive data and

keywords. These findings also reaffirm what we have seen in our two UK

metadata studies, adding further credence to the results.

Key finDings incluDe:• Titles carrying the full complement of basic data elements and a

cover image see average sales per ISBN 75% higher than those which

do not hold this complete data

• The presence of a cover image alone correlates with average sales

51% higher than titles which do not hold a cover image

• The presence of descriptive data elements on title records correlates

with higher average sales – titles holding the 3 descriptive elements

we examined saw average sales 72% higher than those with no

descriptive data attached

• The addition of keywords shows a correlation with higher sales again

– compared to those titles which hold all 3 descriptive data elements,

those that also carry keywords see average sales 28% higher

While many titles do show best practice in meeting the various measures

we have used of metadata quality, there are still a significant proportion

of titles that fall short of this. There is still, therefore, an opportunity to

make a positive impact on the tradability and discoverability of titles – to

fully exploit supply chain efficiencies, and to maximize sales.

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i ONIX for Books is a standard of XML message which is used for

representing and communicating book industry product information

in electronic form. ONIX for Books was originally created by EDItEUR

(www.editeur.org) and the Association of American Publishers – it has

since been developed by EDItEUR jointly with BIC (www.bic.org.uk)

and BISG (www.bisg.org), and is now maintained under the guidance

of a broad international steering committee.

iiThere are some titles within the top 100,000 sellers from Nielsen

BookScan for which the data is not available for output. These are

generally retailer exclusive editions, and we have not included these

records in our data set. This reduces the total number of records we

have used for our analysis to 97,397.

iiiMore specifically, the sales data used is from 19th July 2015 to 17th July

2016. This equates to Nielsen BookScan week 29 of 2015 to week 28 of

2016.

ivBISG previously administered a product data certification program to

help organizations measure and improve the quality of their metadata.

While the program is currently inactive, BISG are seeking to offer this

again in the near future.

vBISG’s Best Practices for Keywords in Metadata is available for free

download from their website (bisg.org).

EDItEUR: The trade standards body for the global book, e-book

and serials supply chains which develops, supports and promotes

standards including ONIX, Thema and EDItX, and provides

management services for the International ISBN and ISNI Agencies.

nOtes/Key:


Sponsors: our thanks to our sponsors for supporting this report which is an essential tool for

the book industry. this uS study provides evidence to support the strong belief that good data

helps to promote and sell books. there is undoubtedly an underlying link between the provision of

good metadata and book sales, and the Nielsen Book US Study: The Importance of Metadata for

Discoverability and Sales will be used, as the uK edition, extensively to promote metadata provision

and best practice for suppliers of bibliographic data in the uS and globally.

About bAker & tAylor:Baker & Taylor is the premier worldwide distributor of books, digital content

and entertainment products from approximately 25,000 suppliers to over

20,000 customers in 120 countries. The company offers cutting-edge digital

media services and innovative technology platforms to thousands of publishers,

libraries, schools and retailers worldwide. Baker & Taylor also offers industry

leading customized library services and retail merchandising solutions. For more

information, visit www.baker-taylor.com

About bowker:Bowker is the world’s leading provider of bibliographic information and

management solutions designed to help publishers, authors, and booksellers

better serve their customers. Creators of products and services that make

books easier for people to discover, evaluate, order, and experience, Bowker is

the official ISBN Agency for the United States and its territories and Australia.

A ProQuest affiliate, Bowker is headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey

with additional operations in the United Kingdom and Australia. For more

information visit www.bowker.com

About FirebrAnd technologies:Firebrand Technologies has been helping publishers manage their internal

workflows, digital distribution, marketing efforts and business intelligence for

30 years. Our solutions touch the lives of thousands of publishing professionals

every day. A unique, community-focused approach gives our clients more than

just tools and support, it helps create an optimal atmosphere for innovation and

product success. For more information visit www.firebrandtech.com

About onixsuite:Onixsuite by GiantChair is the most advanced metadata tool on the market

today, and integrates seamlessly with the legacy systems of publishers and

distributors. Available as a full-service title management and digital distribution

platform, as well as an API, Onixsuite is able to store and manage ONIX data

in all languages. Publishers and distributors in countries around the world

use cloud-based Onixsuite to evaluate, improve and distribute their ONIX.

Consulting and data cleaning services are also available. Contact us for further

information [email protected] or visit our website: www.onixsuite.com


aBout nIelsen Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance

management company that provides a comprehensive understanding

of what consumers watch and buy. Nielsen’s Watch segment provides

media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement

services for all devices on which content — video, audio and text

— is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods

manufacturers and retailers the industry’s only global view of retail

performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch

and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen also provides its

clients with analytics that help improve performance. Nielsen, an S&P

500 company, has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than

90% of the world’s population.

For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

Copyright © 2016 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and

the Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN

Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service names are trademarks or

registered trademarks of their respective companies. 16/10666

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